1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an organic photoelectric transducer element (organic solar cell) using an organic photoconductive material, and can be applied to the technical field of a light sensor, image sensor and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, there have been prepared various photoelectric transducer elements using an inorganic semi-conductor. The desired photoelectric transducer element should have the properties of (i) efficient and high transducing performance and (ii) low cost. It is difficult to say that the conventional photoelectric transducer elements using single crystal Si, GaAs, amorphous Si or the like satisfy the above mentioned second property (ii).
Recently, in order to avoid the above mentioned defects, the preparation of a photoelectric transducer using an organic semic-conductor has been proposed. Examples of these organic semi-conductor layers used for this purpose include as follows:
a. a merocyanine dye layer coated by a spinner (see Japanese Laid Open Patent Nos. 51-122389 and 53-131782); PA0 b. a phthalocyanine vapor deposited layer or a layered structure of an electron donor layer such as ovalene and the like and an electron acceptor layer such as a pyrylium type dye and the like (see Japanese Laid Open Patent No. 54-27787); PA0 c. a eutectic crystal complex layer formed by a pyrylium type due and a polycarbonate (see Japanese Laid Open Patent No. 54-27387); PA0 d. a layer prepared by dispersing a non-metallic phthalocyanine in a binder (see Japanese Laid Open Patent No. 55-9497); PA0 e. a layered structure of n-type silicon and a p-type doped polyacetylene thin film (see Japanese Laid Open Patent Nos. 55-130182 and 55-138879); and PA0 f. a vapor-deposited merocyanine dye layer (see Japanese Laid Open Patent No. 56-35477).
These organic photoelectric transducer elements having a large area can be cheaply prepared by coating a substrate with a solution or dispersion prepared by dissolving or dispersing an organic semi-conductor in a solvent or by vapor-depositing an organic semi-semiconductor at a low temperature on a substrate and further applying an electroconductive layer thereon. However, these conventional transducer elements have the disadvantage that the transducing efficiency is too low for practical use.